Reflection is the power tool to personal & professional growth

One of the most effective forms of personal and professional development is through experience, but unfortunately this is often not leveraged to full effect. Most people assume that simply by experiencing different situations, they naturally learn from it.

This is an unfortunate symptom of our busy lives and a lack of understanding or appreciation for how we actually develop our skills, whether they be leadership, management, coding, writing or any other interest we hold for that matter.

To truly get the most out of our experiences we need to ensure that appropriate time is invested (I use this word purposely, because it is an investment) in observation and reflection.

Action-Observation-Reflection Model

Some of you may have heard about the AOR model, but for those who haven’t I would like to introduce it now. The principle is called “the action-observation-reflection model” which we can all use across various aspects of our lives to develop and grow in a natural way.

The below diagram is the visual representation of the AOR Model, aptly named the “spiral of experience”;

Within this model we can see that our experience grows naturally as we act, observe the results and impacts and then reflect on the outcomes. When you visualise it this way it is kind of common sense right?

In sports this can take form in video review sessions or even analysis of movement through high res replay technologies.

In projects, product or software development we use sprint and projects retrospectives where we ask reflective questions such as;

• What did we do well?
• What could/should we have done better?
• What actions should we take to improve

Invest the time to close the loop

This model is probably not blowing your mind at this point; it seems obvious when presented in such a simple diagram but often we fail to invest the time to see the spiral through its natural cycle, effectively stunting the potential experience gained.